Oh, heavy night. What little choices you leave me…
His brain stuttered. He knew the taste in his mouth. Like fingerprints, every human tasted slightly different, at least to a vampire. He never forgot any one person’s taste. And he certainly couldn’t ever let go of the one in his mouth right then. He’d known her soul. Constantia…
It wasn’t possible. She’d been dead for one hundred years.
The monster forgotten, he picked the little woman up in his arms. She was hurt. Nothing would be solved if he let her die. But, he couldn’t fix her himself. He wasn’t a doctor, and anything he tried to do would only make things worse.
His fangs receded, his human brain coming online at least temporarily. If he had a little time, he’d use it. Who was Essence Welch, and why did she taste like his beloved?
Alec didn’t have a car. He didn’t need one. It had been fifteen years since he’d needed to leave the house. The servants he’d employed for forever and a day brought him whatever he asked for and the council kept them all very wealthy. Beyond that, he’d gotten very good at investing over the years. He was as rich as he could possibly be.
It was time to use that money to get some answers.
Picking up his cell phone, he called Everest, one of his paid human servants. He would drive them to the hospital and then wait during the day to see to whatever Essence needed. At sundown, Alec would return and then there would be answers. So help him.
The moon would not set again before he knew.
*
Having left Essence in the care of people who could help her, he returned home to phone the council. It was almost dawn, but Benyamin would not have rested yet.
“My friend,” his mentor answered him on the first ring. “What troubles your mind as dawn approaches?”
The man was old—so ancient there was little he didn’t know of the world. Alec cleared his throat. “I have sampled the blood of one who shares the taste of my beloved.”
“So, it has happened.” Benyamin didn’t even sound surprised. This concerned Alec more than anything else. What didn’t he know?
“Explain.” They’d gone so long together, sometimes the less said, the better.
“All things are possible, and I have heard of such things before—a return of a soul not done here. The Western peoples would call it reincarnation. I don’t care for terms. Sometimes, one we love comes back to us. They are not the same. This human you’ve found—she will not be your love, exactly. But she is here, and perhaps it is time to find out why. They share a soul.”
Alec braced his hand on the wall. “Why wouldn’t you have told me this before? Why would you have kept this to yourself?”
“I couldn’t promise you she would come. What if she didn’t? I wouldn’t have wanted you to get your hopes up. It was why I urged you not to seek the dawn. Tell me everything that happened. What happens next will be important. You clearly have unfinished business.”
That was putting it mildly.
Chapter Two
Essence’s head pounded. She was lucky she wasn’t concussed, but she still had a massive headache and the pain meds the doctors had loaded her up with before releasing her were only taking the edge off a little bit. It was going to be a long few days until this let up.
Or maybe they were really working well, in which case the gosh darn headache was even worse than she realized. She’d even gone so far as thinking about calling her family back in Texas. But, the day she’d left for New York City they’d written her off. She’d never been very good at following her parents’ rules. Two years earlier, she’d attempted a call to them and they’d hung up, telling her not to call again.
As if New York was the den of hell and she slept nightly with Satan himself. She hadn’t had a boyfriend since she’d moved to the city, and she was still a virgin, for goodness sake. She closed her eyes and let her head pound. The music of The Firebird filled her head. So many dancers had preferred Tchaikovsky but, given the choice, she always brought Stravinsky's music to mind. She’d gotten to dance it just once—in college. The Firebird was a story about mythical Russian bird that could be both a gift and a curse to its owner.
Most things were…
Her mother had thought she was insane when she was growing up. She’d told lavish stories of the Ballets Russes in Paris. What kind of child did that? Why hadn’t she played with Barbies like her sisters? How had she even heard about it? She’d driven her parents crazy, and now she just had herself to make nuts.